1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a communication apparatus and a control method.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, many public places such as fast-food shops, railway stations, and airports have been offering public wireless local area network (LAN) services that provide Internet connection services by use of wireless access points. The public wireless LAN services may be free or fee-based depending on the public wireless LAN provider.
Regarding the fee-based public wireless LAN, in most cases, the use of the Internet is permitted only to the users having legitimate authentication information. Whether the user has legitimate authentication information is determined based on authentication information such as a user ID or a password. The legitimate authentication information is provided by a public wireless LAN provider or an Internet service provider (ISP) when the subscription to the service is started. Further, there is also a public wireless LAN service that allows access to a portal site in the public wireless LAN area before the user authentication. When this service is used, the authentication information can be generated on the spot at the portal WEB site.
IEEE 802.11u(TM)-2011 discusses a method by which an access point of the wireless LAN provides information regarding whether the service provided by the public wireless LAN service is free or fee-based before the connection. According to this information, it can be determined whether the public wireless LAN to be connected provides a paid or a free service. If the service is a paid service, it is determined that the authentication information is necessary.
If the authentication information of the public wireless LAN to be connected is not available, it is necessary to generate the authentication information. However, generating the authentication information is not easy for the user. Under such circumstances, US Patent Application Publication No. 2010/0066839 (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2008-167269) discusses a technique that automatically generates the authentication information by using apparatus information of a terminal according to cooperation of the terminal and a server.
However, if the authentication information is newly generated in the public wireless LAN area where the acquisition of the authentication information is charged, information necessary for the charging will be necessary in generating the authentication information. The information necessary in the charging is, for example, credit card information. If information such as a credit card number is entered in a web form of a charge system, the charging will be executed. Further, a terminal such as a cellular phone or a smartphone can generate the authentication information without the use of the charge information such as the credit card by using a charge system of the cellular phone.
However, a terminal such as a camera which does not use the above-described charge system needs to use charge information in generating the authentication information. In order to generate fee-based authentication information by the camera alone, it is necessary to connect the camera to a web page used for generating the authentication information and enter charge information using a user interface (UI) of the camera. Entering such charge information is troublesome and annoying for the user. This problem is inherent not only to a camera. For example, the inconvenience occurs in an apparatus such as a game machine, a printer, a toy, or a health appliance that does not have a UI suitable for inputting the charge information.